The Descendant is based on a reworking of material created during Johann Wlight's residency at Dunwich Beach in 2004. Philip Julian of Cheapmachines was given exclusive access to the dream diaries and study material of Wlight in order to build an estimation of the missing part of The Oneironautic Recrudescence. Though Wlight and Julian were engaged in sporadic postal correspondence before Wlight's disappearance in 2004, the bulk of the original documents and manuscripts came from the Centre for Narcoacoustic Research in London.